Decisions made in these years affect the rest of your life and are critical.
Get it wrong and the price is poverty in retirement and recently I've heard of too many cases where people heading for retirement have little saved and no plan to get any advice.
Too many are relying on partner's pensions. That's not good enough.
A survey from Just Group this week added to the picture of woefully poor retirement planning.
Research by the firm found that only 14% of retirees are taking regulated advice before giving up work.
Based on these figures it is clear that many people simply ‘crash’ into retirement, often ill prepared and financially ignorant about what lies ahead.
Some have not saved enough, some have done little or nothing to plan and some have just buried their heads in the sand.
However we’ve got here this is just not acceptable in an advanced and affluent, modern society. Something needs to change and soon. Everyone should have a pension plan, no ifs or buts.
Pensions Dashboards will help and so will a nudge towards Pension Wise guidance but the only solution is to guarantee everyone in their 50s some form of free or subsidised retirement advice and then do everything possible to encourage them to take it. Advice in their 20s and 30s would be even better. Leaving planning to 50+ is a blunder.
Advice may be provided by Pension Wise or by other agencies but more help with Financial Planning fees would also help people find professional financial advice from planners although realistically the number of Financial Planners in the UK will never meet the potential demand, at least not in the short term.
The fact is if we want change we can make it happen as we've proved by moving mountains to deal with the pandemic.
If we can vaccinate 47m people against Coronavirus in under a year we can certainly help ‘vaccinate’ the population against pension poverty - if we really want to.
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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience in finance, business and mainstream news. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days. Follow @FPT_Kevin